The book has sixteen papers which focus on the Nordic world (Denmark,
Norway, Sweden Finland, Iceland, the Faroe Isles and Greenland) and says it
covers 1500–1850, however most of the papers are on the 17th and 18th
centuries.

Note that this is available for pre order and is currently
cheaper direct from Oxbow £28.50, than from Amazon £36.85, but I don’t know
what Oxbow is charging for postage.

I was privileged to hear Maj Ringgaard talk about 17th
Scandinavia knitted jackets at a Knitting History Forum meeting, so I am
really looking forward to her paper. They are very different to the “Italian”
jackets we are used to in the V&A and other western, as opposed to northern, European museums.

Saturday, 19 April 2014

Someone asked me the difference between hose and stockings.
Ask me a simple question why don’t you? There are two problems here. The first
is that English English and American English start to part company in the seventeenth
century, just at the time when in England the term hose is changing, becoming
old fashioned and dropping out of use.

I remember being surprised by a song in the seventies which
had a line in the chorus, “May your wife be plagued with ladders in her hose.”
In England we had stockings, which you wore with suspenders, and tights which
were in one piece. Then someone told me that in America tights are panty hose.

Back to the early modern period. Hose is the older word
coming from the Anglo Saxon hosa, and appearing also in the other Germanic
languages. In the middle ages hose was something that covered the whole leg and
did not necessarily include the foot. It usually came as a pair but, because
they came as separate legs not joined, they could be single, “The firste man
that he mette with an hose on that one foot & none on that other.” (Caxton’s
translation of Raoul Lefevre, The History of Jason, 1477). By the end of the middle ages they are joined,
as in the surviving Kloster Alpirsbach
hose which date from c1490-c1530, a detail of the top part can be seen here.

Here we come to the second problem. By the time we get into
the sixteenth century the use of the word is evolving. As Maria Hayward (2007) says “it does not
appear to have been used in a consistent manner.”Looking at Hayward’s analysis of Henry’s
wardrobe accounts the term hose is used almost exclusively at the beginning of
his reign (1510-17) by the end of his reign (1538-45) you still have a lot of
hose, but you also have a considerable number of base stocks, netherstocks and
pairs of stocks. These stocks may be your stockings, indicating the move from
hose that cover the whole leg, to hose that only cover the top part of the leg,
and eventually become referred to as breeches, with stocks, netherstocks,
stockings or socks covering the lower part of the leg.

The way this works can be seen in this description from 1536
which refers to a pair of hose, but the upper section is obviously make separately
from the lower. “Item for making a paire of hoose, upper stocked with carnacion
coloured satten, cutte and embroidered with golde and also lined with fine
white clothe, with two paire of nether stockis, the one paire skarlette, and
the other paire blacke carsye.” (1536) Looking more like the separation that
can be seen in the 1546 portrait of Henry Howard.

For women of course hose never covered the whole leg. For
both men and women hose, certainly in the upper levels of society, were made by
hosiers, not by tailors. George Lovekyn, who was tailor to Edward IV, Richard
III and Henry VII, made doublets, jackets and gowns, but no hose. (Sutton,
1981)
His immediate successor, who had been his apprentice, was Stephen Jasper, he
also did not make hose. However there are many references in Henry VIII’s
wardrobe accounts to William Hosier, who did make hose. Likewise the queens had
their own hosiers; Thomas Humbertson for Elizabeth of York, Thomas Hardy for
Anne Boleyn, Robert Hardy for Anne of Cleves and Catherine Parr. (Hayward, 2007)

Stocking is a much more recent word, the first usage in the
Oxford English Dictionary is in Stubbes Anatomy of Abuses of 1583, but it comes
from the word stock in its sense of meaning to cover, as in from 1530 “A yerd
of black to stock my master's hose.” A half way house from stock to stocking
appears to be stockis. The Privy Purse Accounts of Henry VIII have in 1530“Every one of them ij payer of hosen and ij
payer of stockis.” However stockis is sometimes used instead of hose so in 1535
we have “A paire of upper stockis of purple veluette,..also..a newe paire of
nether stockis.” The upper stocks/stockis/hose are what become known as breeches,
and the netherstocks, nether stockis, hose, are what become stockings.

So the terms are not exactly interchangeable, but require
context to know what is meant. As late as 1647 someone writes of “all that was
in the pockets of their Holliday hose.” On the grounds that stockings don’t
have pockets, they must mean breeches.

Thursday, 17 April 2014

Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset (1589-1624) succeeded
to the title on the death of his father, Robert Sackville,
2nd Earl of Dorset (1560/61–1609). He was married in 1609 to Anne Clifford
(1590-1676), who is probably best known for her diary of the period 1616-19.
The marriage was not particularly happy, Sackville was unfaithful and
extravagant, he was once described as “a man of spirit and talent, but a
licentious spendthrift.”(Jacob, 1974) Anne had a long
running legal case against her uncle in respect of her father’s will, and in
1617 Sackville signed away her claim in return for monies which he used to pay
off his gambling debts.(Spence, 2014)

The painting shown here was produced by William Larkin
around 1613. We actually have an inventory of Sackville’s clothing, now in the
Kent Archive Office and dated 2nd June 1617, which lists what
appears to be this suit. Every item worn in the portrait is described with the
exceptions of his shirt, shoes and hat, although the shoe rose(MacTaggart, 1980)

s and hat band
are described. They appear in the inventory as items 35 to 44

The spellings have been modernised.Terms which appear in the list in bold have
notes or definitions at the end; these notes are in alphabetical order.

35 Item one cloak of uncut velvet black laced with seven
embroidered laces of gold and black
silk and above the borders powdered with slips
of satin embroidered and lined with shag
of black silver and gold

36 Item one doublet of cloth of silver embroidered all over
in slips of satin black and gold

37 Item one pair of black silk grosgrain hose cut upon white cloth of sliver and embroidered all
over with slips of black satin and gold

38 Item one girdle
and hangers of white cloth of silver embroidered with slips of black satin
and gold.

39 Item one pair of gloves with tops of white cloth of
silver embroidered with slips of black satin and gold laced with gold and
silver lace.

41 Item one black pair of taffeta garters edge round with a
small edging lace of gold and silver

42 Item one pair of roses
of black ribbon laced with gold and silver lace.

44 Item a hatband
embroidered with gold and silver upon black taffeta made up with gold and
silver lace.

Item 40 does not appear in the painting it is another pair
of stockings, this time “black silk stockings embroidered with gold and silver.”

TERMS

Girdle and hangers: A girdle is a belt worn around the waist
usually to carry light articles, when paired with the term hanger, a type of
sword, it indicates a belt for a sword.

Grosgrain: Although at later dates this is usually described
as a corded fabric, the original use comes from the French meaning of a large
or coarse grain. The OED describes it as “A coarse fabric of silk, of mohair
and wool, or of these mixed with silk; often stiffened with gum.”(OED, 2014)

Hatband: The hat with its hatband is on the table behind
Sackville. Hatbands also followed fashion causing the playwright Dekker (1609) to comment that a gallant
would, “take off his hat to none unless his hatband be of a newer fashion than
yours.”

Detail of Layton jacket

Lace: when used in the sense of “a small edging lace of gold
and silver” on the garters, shoe roses or gloves, then this probably is a
bobbin lace made of gold or silver thread, as in this edging (right) to the Layton jacket
in the V&A. However when the term is
used, as it is for the cloak “embroidered laces of gold and black silk” then it
is more likely to be an ornamental braid appliqued onto the fabric, as in this
late sixteenth century cloak in the Museum
of London a rear view of the same
cloak can be seen here.

Roses: The rise and fall of the shoe rose is cover in a blogpost here.Peacham (1618) complained that shoe
roses were so expensive they could be “from thirty shillings to three, four and
five pounds the pair.”

Shag: Shag is any fabric with a long raised pile – think of shag
carpets for a modern use of the term. It may look like fur when seen in a
painting. A surviving garment with shag
is Francis Verney’s loose gown from c.1608, surprisingly I cannot find this in
the National Trust’s image database, but it is available here.

Slips: Slips are embroidered motifs which are worked and then cut
out and appliqued onto a, usually more expensive, ground fabric. Sometimes the
slips survive on their own without their backing fabric as in this example,
sold by Bonhams,
or this in the Victoria
and Albert Museum.Uncut examples,
where the motif was worked, but it was never used, also survive.

Thursday, 10 April 2014

This started when someone posted a detail of a SebastianVrancx painting onto the English Civil War (ECW) and Mid-17th Century Living
History Group page on Facebook, the detail is in the bottom right of the painting. While
others were discussing the fact that she’s wear a partlet under her gown I was
looking at two other features. First since she is taking off the gown, the
painting is entitled travellers attacked by robbers, you can see that it is a
bodice with a skirt attached, an over gown. Second that she has “virago
sleeves,” and as the museum date the painting to 1617-19 these are early.

The over gown.

1620s and 1630s outfits from Kelly and Schwabe

Over gowns with separate skirts attached to them rarely
survive from this period, the only adult one I can think of is the 1639 gown
worn by Pfalzgrafin Dorothea Maria von Sulzbach.(Arnold, 1985) The loose gowns
examined by Janet Arnold cover the period 1570 to 1620, but they are one piece
from shoulder to ground, and the next examples are the manutas from the late
1690s, early 1700s, again one piece from shoulder to ground.(Arnold, 1977) There was a
surviving over gown of the 1620s in France before the Second World War which
appeared in Kelly & Schwabe’s (1929) book Historic
Costume 1490-1790, shown left. I have no idea where this garment is now, it was originally
in the collection of the Société de l’Histoire du Costume, Paris. This is the
sort of over gown which appears in the Vrancx painting and here in the
Van Dyck portrait of Portrait of Marie-Louise de Tassis. In the Van Dyck
portrait, like the example in Kelly & Schwabe, the virago sleeves are on
the under bodice, and the over gown has a simple sleeve open at the front and
caught together only at the cuff. Whereas in the Vrancx painting the virago
sleeves appear to be on the gown. The pattern in Kelly and Schwabe is described
as after Leloir, Leloir’s Histoire du costume, tome VIII, Louis XII (1610-1643)
was not published until 1933, but the authors acknowledge his help in their
introduction. The pattern gives only the under bodice and the bodice of the
over gown with no pattern for the skirt, nor any information as to how it was
attached, and is shown below.

Pattens from Kelly and Schwabe

Emily Gordenker(2001) has commented that
Van Dyck, in his later years, removed the over gown from the ladies he painted
in order to simplify the garments worn, so that he could paint the costume more
rapidly. However the gown does appear to be going out of fashion by the middle
of the century, though at least one of Hollar’s Ornatus prints seems to show this
style.

The sleeves.

According to several sources Randle Holme in his Academie of
Armory, 1688, described virago sleeves as ‘The heavily puffed and slashed
sleeve of a woman’s gown, then fashionable.’ I haven’t actually been able to
find this quote. Comments I can find in Holme are that sleeves have “As much
variety of fashion as days in the year,” and “The slasht-sleeve, is when the
sleeve from shoulder to the sleeve hands are cut in long slices or fillets; and
are tied together at the elbow with ribbons, or such like.” When looking at a series of dated women’s
portraits the earliest I have previously found was 1620 and the latest 1632,
giving a fashionable period of some ten years. There is some slashing at the
top of Queen
Anne’s 1617 sleeve in the painting by Somers, but it is not a virago
sleeve. In most of the portraits the virago sleeve is on the garment worn under
the gown and not, as in the Vrancx painting, on the gown itself.